Time Bomb
by snappleducated
Summary: You are too fast in accepting the idea of suicide. This wasn't. — Misa


**Titled**: Time Bomb  
**Fandom**: Death Note  
**Pairing**: Misa/L, Misa/Light  
**Length**: 2000 words  
**Disclaimer**: I don't own Death Note.  
**Notes**: This fandom is too smart for me.

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Misa is a deceiver.

Misa moves through her days with a calculation that might rival Light's. Her smiles have been trained onto her, and her giddy, bubbly laughter is an artful construction. She goes by the guidebook. She plays to win.

She wears white to Ryuuzaki's funeral.

There are little boys and girls from the orphanage who come, who clutch each other and steal looks at the woman in white. _Ghostly_, they might say, _Beautiful_.

_She looks a bit like an angel_, one of the littlest ones whispers, and she is hushed.

Misa looks and looks at the tombstone and swallows because they have left it blank. Here lies a man who shall slip as quietly from this world as he had entered and lived it, and something about the idea of this—this martyrdom, this saintliness, strikes her as unfitting.

It isn't fair.

She shouldn't have to feel guilty for the bad guys.

She reminds herself that L was the bad guy—that he was the obstructer of justice, of Light, of her utopia. Misa relaxes into Light's embrace, a content, crookedly true smile hidden in his shoulder, and she closes her eyes blissfully. Of course—she had forgotten. The wicked had been punished.

_Kira loves her_, Misa tells herself, and squeezes Light's hand, he being the very embodiment of her prayers. Kira is on Misa-Misa's side.

Kira is justice.

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Misa is a sinner.

She drinks fancy, imported wine, (too much wine) and studies the tranquil beauty of it—the elegant ruby of it.

She lies between her clean white sheets in a bed that is much too wide, drinking wine in the dark and trying to find the ceiling. She can't spot it. She can't find it anymore.

She waits for Light to come home and feels rather like the dolls on her shelves; neglected and left to dust. She is a woman who will roll over in the morning and swallow the traces of perfume that Light shall have brought home with him.

But Misa will hold her tongue this time.

This is her punishment.

This is what she must do to court her God.

For Misa has sinned.

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Misa is a betrayer.

The cemetery's grass is cold beneath her knees, and Misa doesn't know what she's doing here. She doesn't know why she should defile her devotion with such—smear her love for Light, for Kira, with the tarnishing of a dead man.

Misa lies her ear to the earth and listens to him whisper—listens to all his nasty, nasty words, that he is justice, that if he has fallen than another shall take his place—that their own wickedness shall turn against them, that they shall fall, they shall—

Misa scrambles back from the ground, from the grave, and watches for a moment to be sure that the heretic is dead, that the witch is burned.

About her ankles, the grass stirs.

"You're wrong!" Misa tells the marble, "You're a liar! Misa-Misa is a good person! _You_ are the bad guy!"

She stands back and spits, because she is the angel that shall stand by God's side, and she shall command the world to righteousness. She shall punish all the sinners.

Something within her twists, and she wonders again what she's doing here—here and her enemy's final resting place. No, Kira's enemy.

Light is halfway across the world, shaking hands in America and checking out hotel rooms and he doesn't sleep with her anymore, ever since she skipped off the pill, and Misa's so cold, so cold, she's so—

Misa stops herself, lips quivering, and turns back to her car.

Light is halfway around the world.

Kira is always watching.

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Misa is a liar.

She laughs outright at Kiyomi's boasts—shoots down the other woman's self assurance with cat calls and low blows. She sneers at this woman—this idealist, and thinks, honestly thinks, that she needs to grow up.

Misa is not stupid enough to think that Light, (darling, perfect Light,) has been ever faithful. Misa understands that. She can see his teeth marks on Kiyomi's neck, on her swollen lips and mused hair, and stares back at all the haughty pride in the younger woman's eyes, and scorns such foolish idealism.

Light hasn't slept with her in a year.

Misa doesn't think about that. Except that she does—she does and really, Light still keeps her around, so that must mean it's love. He loves her for more than just her body.

Misa knocks back her wine and laughs at cool, sophisticated Kiyomi, who just isn't old enough to understand these things.

Misa loves Light. Her Light, who is so smart and so smooth and polished and perfect, who's working against the world for justice, to show all those sinners that Kira is wrong, that Kira has lied to them. Her Light, who she can never love enough.

Misa loves L. Poor L, all alone in the ground, and he must be frozen stiff as it's December, and she swirls the wine through her glass and lies through her teeth so that Kiyomi, smart and beautiful Kiyomi, will never guess how close she is to shattering.

But more than either of them, more than the men who fight against the thing she so adores, Misa loves Kira.

Someday, she imagines, Light will understand.

Maybe, she hopes, Ryuuzaki already did.

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Misa is a mourner.

The ground is too frozen for them to bury Light—Light, her Light, who was Kira after all, her God—and so they burned him instead, ridding the body of its contamination. There would be no one to crack his coffin lid, and reintroduce the world to its sickness.

Misa chokes herself in black, and watches a God burn.

At the service, there is little to do. She spots Sayu and her mother, both of them staring blankly at Light's photograph, their eyes filled with emptiness.

Misa looks away. She cannot bear this slight on him. They should feel proud—proud of their son who had built himself wings, and flown on his wings until he had surpassed the sun, where he remains.

Yes, Misa tells herself, Kira is always watching.

For even as Light's wings burned and melted, and his body was sent crashing back to Earth, Kira remained. Kira hung above them, ever watching.

Misa smiles, and leaves the room with a scent of fire.

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Misa is a chronicler.

She builds Light a little shrine, because he has died without a tombstone, (much like Ryuuzaki) and if it's a sunny day, she visit Ryuuzaki as well, so he won't get lonely.

The shrine she has made for Light is rotting with offerings. It's clogged up with ash from all the flowers she's burned, and the little table groans beneath the weight of all the rotting food. In contrast, Ryuuzaki's grave stays cold atop its hill, marked only by the plain grey marble. Misa brings him pinwheels and cupcakes, sets them out all neatly and nibbles when he isn't looking.

Poor Ryuuzaki. She shakes her head. There is no way to defeat a God.

(She is still waiting for Kira's return. He will return to her, she knows it. Kira has never lied to her.)

Misa spreads out her hair and lets it nestle into the grace, lets it dip down to his coffin, so he might see it and remember her. Misa remembers everything about Ryuuzaki. She doesn't quite know why that is—why it's so easy to recall a man several years dead, while her memories of Light have begun to blur, some of the details slipping off and away.

She tells Ryuuzaki all of this, and he listens. He has always listened to Misa, even when he was alive. He'd sit in his chair and lick at his sugar, dark eyes appraising as he babbled on and on, drunk off the power of it—for Ryuuzaki had never, ever told her to shut up.

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Misa is a puppeteer.

The months carefully move on. Misa makes sure to always paint her smile on, because it wouldn't do not to look her best. Kira is always watching. Kira is always there. Misa will smile for Kira, even if no one remains to watch. She wears black because she mourns—more for Ryuuzaki now, than for Light, for if Kira is eternal so too, then, is Light.

Light had never been just a man.

When she visits the cemetery, there is nothing at his grave save what she had left from previous visits. She brushes aside the rotting sugar for fresh, and lays little kisses to his tombstone, chatting merrily to the open air, and imagining him perched beside her, thumb between his teeth, expression grave.

Misa kicks her feet up into the air and sighs, because it is so nice to have someone listen. It is so nice to have him here, just a short stop away, for the dead shall never leave you.

In her room, Light's shrine has turned black with decay. She leaves it as it is, for she has no use for such a thing, if Light isn't really dead. She's happy she's realized this—that she has only to mourn Ryuuzaki, and not Light.

But without them both, she still has Kira.

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Misa is a destroyer.

Matsuda eyes the rot behind her with alarm, and reaches forwards, something like disguist in his eyes, or perhaps only pity.

She watches calmly as he recoils from the rot, but disposes of it anyways. He sends her apologetic glances throughout, as though he expects her to stop him, or at least to cry. Misa does neither, only watches with a secretive grin.

She knows what he does not, but has promised Kira not to tell. There would be trouble, if they knew that Light yet lived.

As Matsuda leaves, her shrine going with him in garbage bags, Misa waves and begs him to come again. He smiles awkwardly and almost runs away—and Misa knows that look. Something in her stomach solidifies, for he has the eyes of a nonbeliever.

A heretic.

(False God.)

And Misa knows that she cannot stay here—that she will leave this place by her own will, or another's.

Misa runs.

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Misa is a follower.

And as she runs, she runs from all of them. She runs from Sayu, who is too weak to understand—too understand the sacrifice that her brother has made. Too understand the pride she should feel.

She runs from Kiyomi, whose grave she has never visited, and who died barely hours after Misa had spoken to her. Kiyomi—Kiyomi who was everything that Misa wasn't, and whose perfume Light would wear home, smile sated.

She runs from Matsuda, who has betrayed her, and who chases. Matsuda, who thinks that he is there to help, but knows nothing—nothing about who she is, who she mourns, and shall never understand. Matsuda is a sinner, for her has betrayed her God.

She runs from Light, for he is dead and she can hardly, hardly remember him anymore. It feels as though her memories have all twisted and she sees monsters in her dreams, monsters who have died for her and she knows—she knows Light was Kira but he can't be Kira because Light has fallen to Earth while Kira rules the clouds.

She runs from L, who would watch her with his creepy dead eyes, looking like he wanted to eat her, and she could never tell him anything, nothing at all. Misa turns sharply, and sobs up the final flight of stairs. She could never tell L anything at all, and he was her enemy and she couldn't remember why she'd—she was not the bad guy.

She runs towards Kira, who is not Light and is not L or for they are only men, men Misa has loved and men who have failed her, but Kira is a God—and God can never die.

Kira holds out his hand.

Misa runs to the edge of the roof, jumps over the railing, and takes her position by his side.

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"It is done," Near says, and looks away from the clock.


End file.
